The best brick in America gets fired from clay dug out of this state's ground, and Raleigh is built of it — hundred-year bungalows near downtown, ranches under the oaks, new construction pushing past the beltline. We sweep, repoint, rebuild and cap all of it with our own crew, and a tradesman answers the phone live, weekdays, seven in the morning till seven in the evening.
Nothing on this list gets handed to a subcontractor and hoped about. Our crew does the work, our office sets the price, and our name stands behind both.
Rod on rod from the top, canvas spread below before the first pass, and the brush worked until the liner reads clean the whole way. What the flue lets go of gets caught, bagged and carried off.
The whole system, gone through the way you'd want it gone through if you weren't watching — firebox to cap, inside and out, free and clear. A camera run rides along whenever a sale or a stubborn question needs seeing.
When a stack is past saving, it gets taken down to the last course still holding, then raised again in brick worthy of the state that fired it — bedded full, checked plumb at every lift, crowned to shed a Carolina downpour.
Old joints cleaned back to a sound seat and refilled with mortar mixed for that wall — lime-rich and forgiving for the bungalow streets, firmer for postwar work — then struck so the repair keeps the wall's own face.
An uncapped flue in this town hosts chimney swifts by summer and squirrels by fall. A stainless cap — fitted over the clay pot or straight to the tile — keeps the wildlife out and the driven rain with it.
Ceiling stains lie about their origins. We read the chimney from the crown downward — cap seat, flashing line, saturated brick — until the true way in is found, then seal that and only that. The stain quits when its source does.
Cracked tile or no tile at all, the cure is the same: one continuous stainless liner fed down the full run of the flue, sized to the appliance below, insulated where the code has an opinion, warranted for decades.
The hearth is the room's front porch, and it should look the part: smoke-stained brick scrubbed back to its color, burnt-out firebrick relaid in refractory bed, dampers freed, and inserts set square where they belong.
Chimneys are fair-minded — they warn before they fail. The homeowner who reads the warnings pays for a morning's work; the one who doesn't pays for a season's.
No mystery to how we work: you call, we look, you read the numbers, we do the work and clear out clean.
A tradesman answers weekdays, seven to seven. Describe the trouble in your own words and pick a day that suits.
The whole system, free and clear, ending with a plain-language verdict in your driveway — not a sales pitch.
Each item priced on its own, needs split from niceties, all of it in writing. The figure holds from quote to invoice.
The work done right, the yard picked up behind us, and the guarantee left with you on paper.
By the time the first cold snap rolls down off the Piedmont, the chimneys we saw in September are already burning easy. One weekday call puts yours on the fall list — and the looking, as ever, is free and clear.
(919) 850-5612Recent pages — flues rodded, courses laid, caps fitted and flashing sealed from downtown out past the beltline.
The office sits on S Saunders just below downtown; the trucks run the city, the beltline and the towns around Wake County.
Your corner missing? Call (919) 850-5612 — the trucks range farther than the list.
Zero, now and forever after. It goes through firebox, damper and throat, follows the flue every foot of its run, then takes in crown, cap, flashing and the outside courses — and it winds up with the tradesman handing you the verdict in the driveway, in words your grandmother would call plain. No service-call fee, no trip charge, no bill drifting in later. The single thing on our card with a price is the full report in writing: the look-see's findings set down beside their photographs for $149, and it gets made only on your order.
First, the plain truth behind the hours: the phone is answered live by a tradesman Monday through Friday, seven to seven, and on weekends the crews are with their families. A Saturday message goes on the recorder and gets the first callbacks Monday at seven sharp. Now the part that matters more than any schedule: fire showing anywhere outside the firebox, or carbon monoxide even crossing your mind, means you put the household on the lawn and ring 911 before anyone thinks of us. Everything short of that — an odd smell, a damper that won't budge, a cap gone crooked — holds safely until Monday if you simply don't light a fire under it.
They can, and around the older streets they often have. Brick from that era was fired softer, and the lime mortar between courses was made to give — it sacrifices itself so the brick doesn't. Patch it with today's hard portland mix and the joint outmuscles the brick, which then spalls along every repair line. Our rule for the old neighborhoods is gauge the cure to the patient: softer lime-rich blends, joints raked clean rather than ground wide, and color matched so the streetside face never shows where the work was done.
A Raleigh chimney takes its beating in the off-season, not the cold. Carolina summers keep brick warm and damp for months on end; tropical-remnant storms drive rain sideways into crowns and flashing every fall; and a flue that sits idle from March to November is an open invitation to squirrels, chimney swifts and wasps — all of whom you'll meet the first evening you light a fire. Mild winters change what goes wrong, not whether. The autumn look-see catches the summer's damage and whatever moved in over it.
Pace it by the burning. A fireplace that worked through the cool months takes one sweeping a year, best scheduled when the season closes or just ahead of the next. One that sat all summer gets checked before the first fire of fall, since idle flues collect wildlife and their housekeeping. Gas and oil heating flues carry a separate yearly date of their own — their residue works on tile and metal in silence, and nobody smells it coming.
That's the phone call that reorders our week. The free look-see gets scheduled within days, the flagged flue gets a camera run so the discussion works from footage instead of guesswork, and the $149 report comes back typed with its photographs in two or three business days. It's written for the closing table — attorney, lender, the buyers' inspector — and a documented page tends to settle what a phone call never would.
Nobody but our own crew — hired, trained and kept, never gathered up job by job. Each man was vetted before he ever wore the company's name and works under our liability and workers'-compensation coverage every minute he's on your lot. Want it in writing? Mention it when you set the date, and the insurance certificate gets emailed ahead of the visit, so you've read the proof before the truck pulls in.
It will not, and we're glad to be judged on it. Canvas goes down from the door to the hearth first thing, the opening gets sealed before a rod goes up, and the vacuum never shuts off until the brushes do — everything the flue gives up rides home in the machine. The better part of an hour later the gear is packed, the canvas comes up clean, and the room looks like nobody visited at all.
No forms and nothing automated worth mentioning. The voice that answers can judge the trouble from your telling, give a range that holds, and book the visit before you're off the line.
The smoke smell that lingered, the sand in the firebox, the date the buyers circled — one plain telling is all it takes. You'll come away with a yes-or-no, a day on the calendar, and a range that holds.
(919) 850-5612 Tap to Call the OfficeWeekdays, 7 AM – 7 PM, live
Sixty hours a week of a person, not a menu